Business Marketing Press Archived Content from 2013

Business Marketing Press was a news and information website that covered the latest in online advertising and marketing world.
Content is from the site's 2012 - 2014 archived pages.

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POSTS

Edgy Online Marketing Tactics for Your Social Media Business Accounts

Posted On Thursday, December 5, 2013 By Business Marketing Press.

There’s no debate on the power of social media as an effective marketing tool. It has been tested and proven to reap success for those businesses that took advantage of social media’s influence to millions of people subscribed to the World Wide Web. Online marketing techniques delivered to promote the social media business accounts provide the quickest way to reach to the target market.

And in this time and age, traditional marketing has taken a backseat as online marketing has become a real necessity for many businesses. So what sort of online marketing tactics should you employ to maximize the desired results of your social media campaign?

Give Them Reason to Follow Your Social Media Pages

It’s hard enough to engage customers through the traditional email marketing campaign so you must give them a really good reason to follow your social media pages. And you can do that by inserting Facebook and Twitter links on your blog or website. For them to see your blog, you must offer them interesting, useful and valuable content. Aside from putting social media links to your blogs or websites, you can also include them (social media links) to every marketing material that you send out to customers and non-customers as well. You can’t allow your social media accounts to lay dormant waiting for people to find them. Tell the people where they can find you. Ask your friends or loyal customers to suggest to their friends or network to follow your social media pages.

Explore all Social Media Sites

Don’t limit your options to Facebook and Twitter. Find out how other social media sites can enhance your social media marketing. Do your research on Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Digg and Reddit. Each of these sites had built its own following which can be useful for your social media marketing.

Keep them Warm

Having social media accounts mean you have to keep those who follow you warm and satisfied. The social media platforms are the best ways to engage them so make sure your social media sites are updated with fresh and new information that is relevant and interesting to them. Ignoring them won’t give you their loyalty. If you don’t have time, assign a person who will monitor your social media accounts and keep them interactive.

Make sure that you engage them in any of the following ways:

Weekly tweets, chats or virtual meetings. You can schedule any of these on a weekly basis where participants discuss a topic of your choice that you facilitate by throwing questions or comments. It would also help to post giveaways on Facebook to generate noise.

Update your blog sites with fresh, intelligent and well-written content to build your following. If you can do this on a bi-weekly basis it will do your sites good. Encourage your readers to comment or repost and hope that something goes viral.

Avoid automated marketing techniques. Customers need to feel they are talking to real people and not to some automated apps or programs that are prompted in certain conditions. You are likely to alienate your followers if you feed them with pre-packaged content and timed posts. You should learn to customize your content according to the requirements of your social media streams. Shorter contents go to Twitter, longer posts go to Facebook, and images or pictures go to Instagram or Pinterest.

Get Help from A Social Media Expert

Ideally, a social media expert can provide the needed boost to your social media sites. They have the experience and skills to engage the followers. Social media experts can “read” what the followers want and therefore can craft effective content that will satisfy their wants and needs. A social media expert can further stretch the power and effectiveness of your online marketing techniques that will enhance your social media accounts.

If you are clear with your online marketing objectives and targets, you know that these would help your campaign.

Among the numerous gadgets available in the market nowadays, tablets and smartphones are preferred mainly because of their portability and their ability to access the Internet. Thus, they are considered mobile devices. But despite the similarities of their functions, user behavior of one device differs greatly from the other, in terms of experience and expectation.

Such user behavior is important for online marketers to understand when, where and how consumers use the device for their specific research and purchase transactions.

Consumer Preference: Smartphone, Tablet, PC. A report from comScore’s Mobile Future in Focus showed that 37% of all time spent in digital media is done using the mobile device. 67% is attributed to PC use. And although PC remains an important player in the digital world, consumers are showing an increased leaning towards using mobile devices more – either the smartphone or the tablet, depending on the user’s needs.

And while marketers believe that conversions related to mobile advertising should occur in-device, only 22% of mobile users complete a purchase using their smartphone or tablet. Hence, the full impact of mobile cannot be measured without tracking conversion activities beyond the mobile device. Most online purchase-related activities are still done via the PC, thus affecting targeting strategy to mobile ad creative.

Tablet Users Care about Location. Smartphones and tablets vary in size. Most consumers are never without their smartphones as they constantly rely on them to access information while on the go. On the other hand, tablet usage is usually done at home or at work. The difference in usage location has significant effect in the type of user-intent related to consumer expectation of distance.

Smartphones gained prominence because of its on-the-go convenience. And majority of smartphone users take distance into consideration. Tablet users access their device to search for information, research, browse, etc., 45% of them is within a 5-mile radius of their current location. These expectations of distance across both devices trigger engagement activities that advertisers should take note.

Sometimes Smartphone and Tablet are One and the Same. Tablets were more known for highly illustrative, graphical branded experiences while smartphone activities are mostly focused on utility in map and navigation and local directory properties. But overall, both devices are almost equally used to access the same information or properties.

Both devices prefer branded apps or websites and a little of search engines as an essential tool needed by users of both devices. This is why many brands and advertisers are re-tweaking their sites to be compatible with both the tablet and the smartphones.

Smartphone and tablet users will still need a browser to look for the websites they need or want. While some may think that smartphone users may not be interested in a branded experience, that sort of assumption may just drive the users to your competitors who provide the users with excellent user experience. Always keep in mind that mobile culture is constantly changing so any unfounded assumption may negatively impact your marketing efforts.

Conclusion

Mobile consumers choose their device based on their specific needs in certain instances. A user may use his smartphone as he travels from home to office; one may be in a meeting and use their tablet for some information research. At home, users can make a conscious choice between the two devices. And such behavior drives all subsequent mobile purchase-related activity.

You can work your advertising and marketing efforts by identifying mobile user activity according to the device they use as mobile consumers tell you what they want and how they want it. With that knowledge you can better engage and guide the users throughout their interaction with your business.

Which Social Network is Best for B2B Marketing

Posted On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 By Business Marketing Press

Most B2B marketers are capitalizing on the power of social networks today more than they ever did in the past. It’s a clear showing of the impact social network has in terms of marketing effectiveness. But which of the social network offers the best platform for B2B marketing? The social network choices include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube. Each of these sites offers B2B value for marketing. The only question is, who does it best?

How to be Successful in Social B2B

Whenusing social media for purposes of marketing for B2B entities, the end goal is qualified lead generation. To achieve this goal, B2B marketers should have a solid social media marketing plan that defines the market position and an analysis report of online competition. Success will rely largely on leadership and credibility built around a market position identifying the target engagement.

There should be an alignment required between the online brand and the B2B organization’s brand promise, value proposition and mission. Factors to be considered include types of target audience, breakdown of network audience, types of content by audience, objective of social network, tone of network and engagement levels of network.

Google+ – Edge

The statistics are talking – 350 million active users as of March 2013. This is an obvious indication that Google+ is well on its way to becoming the next big social network for business. Its number of users is definitely more than those of YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contents posted on Google+ has a better chance of high ranking since they are fed into the personal search results of Google+ circles. Online video and text-supported images integrated in a content will ultimately benefit from more exposure. A content fed to Google+ from a YouTube channel or Pinterest board will likely be integrated into other developing applications that support content marketing and organic search. For any B2B marketer, nothing is more valuable than social signals.

The other features of Google+ such as the business page and Hangout both provide opportunities to gain edge on B2B marketing. The business page can kickstart relationship building, which is important in B2B sales, and Hangout can get business professionals talking on Google+ through video conferencing.

Google+- Downside

Google+ is more of a platform for content delivery rather than a vehicle for business networking. Talks on Google+ can easily get out of hand and this can be a turnoff same as having too many emails for a B2B project. Also, Google+ has not polished and refined its overall B2B adoption. Google should look at making an investment to market the business pages.

LinkedIn – Edge

The purpose of LinkedIn is to create and develop business relationships, so it definitely is good at that. Proof is the 225 million active users in more than 200 countries. LinkedIn’s edge is on personal branding for executives, sales development, and marketing opportunities using LinkedIn targeted, real-time lead generating advertising. Success in LinkedIn is based on daily use to provide support to your connections and Groups.

LinkedIn’s marketing is target-specific – by location, title, industry, company and other demographics. Businesses are provided with opportunities to engage with company followers on a one-on-one level, making it the ultimate social networking tool for business professionals. LinkedIn’s Groups provide a venue for real networking – in terms of comments and status engagement. The most valuable feature of LinkedIn is its ability to learn everything about a target prospect.

LinkedIn – Downside

As a website, LinkedIn may not be as powerful due to multiple user experience and functional issues – unnecessary pop-ups, disabled links, or messages. B2B marketers cannot solely rely on LinkedIn networking and marketing working on its own. It needs support from offline or personal interaction to seal a deal.

Twitter – Edge

The easiest way for busy business professionals, marketers and CEOs to get the “word” out is through Twitter. It allows information to travel fast by linking back to important web pages of conversations, i.e., the blog or website. B2B marketers can use Twitter’s private lists to engage with targeted media.

Twitter is strong on three key components of B2B marketing – thought-leadership, online reputation and strong online brand. Twitter is where real-time conversations happen, thanks to its ability to tweet 24/7. It is the best social media when it comes to covering events and running events live.

Event marketing for conferences, workshops and seminars are important in B2B marketing and Twitter’s search algorithm and use of hashtags make it easy for reporters to find speakers and interview subjects for the purpose.

Twitter – Downside

Maybe it’s easy to find reporters or business professionals through Twitter but whether you will get a reply or not is uncertain. Also, articles shared on Twitter will become visible in organic Google results, and because Google owns Google+, it will be the same for Google+.

In terms of developing relationships, Twitter is nowhere near LinkedIn’s connect.

YouTube – Edge

Online video certainly has an impact on any online marketer’s social media marketing campaign, but only if done correctly. This means it has been well-thought of in terms of brand and target engagement.

As a Google product and as a platform for video feeding/linking, it already offers B2B social networking opportunity. Compelling videos shared appropriately can absolutely drive qualified inbound leads. An added bonus is the fact that YouTube videos can be embedded and shared on websites and this is an important online marketing tool. Hence, videos can become visible to social networking sites like Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.

YouTube – Downside

It is not a standalone B2B social network. Lead capture and development of relationships will not happen on YouTube.

Facebook – Edge

Still, the top social media network, Facebook has its elements in delivering client services, event announcements and online promotions, which are part of B2B social media tool. Facebook has the ability to gain opt-ins for email marketing on a business page and this is an important B2B feature.

Facebook – Downside

For B2B marketers to gain from Facebook, they need to heavily engage in target and organizational groups and pages. And while direct B2B sales relationships can be created via Facebook, it’s nowhere near the level of LinkedIn or even Twitter.

From this comparative breakdown, it is clear that LinkedIn is the most equipped social network when it comes to B2B marketing. And for obvious reasons – it was created to purely develop direct B2B sales relationships for B2B marketers.

Online Multi-Level Marketing Strategy

Posted On Monday, August 12, 2013 By Business Marketing Press.

Multi-level marketing (MLM) is everywhere. A lot of businesses have turned into this type of marketing and gained tremendous success. A lot of multi-level marketers have raked in some fortune out of their successful product distribution and recruitment strategies combined. You’ve heard many great success stories on how millions were made through multi-level marketing alone. In many of these stories, they would say they owe it to their productive marketing team which plays a key role in one’s earnings.

E-commerce or online marketing like multi-level marketing has been thriving for years, although e-commerce didn’t have enough online marketers. For some time, online marketing was not able to perform as good as multi-level marketing. Fortunately, things have changed and with the advent of social media marketing, the Internet has become the perfect platform for network markets to build relationships required in the marketing process.

While both techniques are effective in their own ways, the network marketer should determine what is more important or effective – focus on product or recruitment. For MLM, what is initially highlighted is the earning potential followed by product quality. In this setup, recruitment is given more attention than the product. And many stories have spread around on how MLM recruits fail even at the early stage of their campaign.

One of the reasons is marketing an “unknown” product. It’s particularly difficult to convince people to buy products they don’t know or have not heard about. Without a solid endorsement from credible personalities, people will simply not take the risk. Aside from marketing unknown products, MLM recruits most of the time are not able to assert product knowledge or authority. Product knowledge really plays an important role when trying to convince a potential customer to try your product. And that knowledge should not be confined to the product being marketed, but should extend to the other brands with same benefits. Hence, MLM recruits are not just learning about one product but multiple since competing brands should be included for comparison.

With such obstacles, the motivation to make money online and offline is somewhat defeated. One can really make money from a product or service that is known to give real and time tested benefits. To market a product or service, you must truly believe in it, use it and affirm the benefits you have from the product. Otherwise, it will just be too hard to overcome the first two obstacles.

Sustainable MLM Business Online

In order to succeed at sustaining an MLM business online, sellers should consider the following:

Tried and tested credible products. You should not go into marketing products which have not been heard about locally or elsewhere. Your marketing identity will be built on such known quality products. Brands that are household favorites are the best starting point. You will be looking for customers who have tried the brand or product, lost touch with the supplier but might want to try again. You can also add established brands to which your product fits in, so customers will easily associate your product with certain brands.

Increase New Product Lines. You need to invest in trying new products to see if you can be productive with it. Always put yourself in the shoes of consumers when trying out new products.

Invest in Knowledge. It won’t hurt to spend time to watch or listen to health related programs, read relevant articles, and attend workshops. Knowledge is power especially when communicating with customers.

Share stories through articles. This is a good way to build a more personal relationship with your customers. If you are able to share good stories with customers, they will have a good reason to believe you.

Provide a Purchase Platform. Allow your customers the convenience of getting the products from you online. Keep an online presence and make the web a venue for you and your customers to interact, communicate and transact. It follows that you should have all the necessary information needed for such transactions – terms and conditions, return policy, shipping policy, secure payment, etc.

10 Important Things to Consider for Start-Up Business

Posted On Monday, July 8, 2013 By Business Marketing Press.

With the economy still struggling to make its giant leap, people get restless and think of ways to fight the downturn. And because bad economy is not exactly the best time for employers to add on manpower or to promise wage increases, the best remaining option is to become self-employed. That means starting your own business. The thought of being your own boss can be inspiring and exciting but before you get carried away, there are some important things you should consider before making a rush decision to quit your day job and do a start-up business.

The Concept

Different as people can be from one another, an exact same concept or idea may be shared by hundreds of people out there, without you knowing it. It is therefore important to make a research on the concept that you are toying with to see if anyone had explored it already. If the idea has been used, you can still think of a unique or different angle or approach you can do with the same core concept. You need to make a study on the viability of your idea. If it makes for a good business model, you will have to check the legal aspects, that is, if the idea is legally protected by a patent or license, etc.

The Business Plan

This is another important preliminary study for the business you want to start. With a well-studied business plan, you won’t face as many problems or obstacles as those without one.

The Business Structure

This may need a consult with a lawyer or CPA to understand the pros and cons of the different business structures.

The Bus Driver, Passengers and the Bus

As the bus driver of your company, you should know where you want your bus (company) to go, how you can bring the bus (company) to its destination and who will be your passengers (employees) as you travel. This will give you a clear direction of how to move forward when it comes to your general business objectives.

Targeting Customers

This should be identified long before you start your business. You need to know your target market and how you can get them to your store or company to buy your products and avail your services.

Website

You can never leave this part out because online presence and visibility is key to a business’ success or failure. Make sure that your website represents your business or company as accurately as possible so as not to confuse customers.

Your Launch

For people to know about your business, you need to create some noise about it to attract attention. This is where your marketing 101 should be useful and valuable in bringing people to your online site and your physical store or office.

Money Matters

This is the tough one – funding, financial resources, capital. Along with the question on how you will finance your business, you should also check on the impact of taxation on your business. Check for tax breaks or incentives, etc. While you will later on have a CPA to take care of your accounting stuff, it won’t hurt to learn a little about it before you officially launch your business.

Learn Everything

You don’t want to regret not having exerted an effort to learn more about the business and the possible hiccups along the way. Business is a dynamic thing and is affected by a host of factors – market, economy, environment, regulations, etc. Don’t miss out on any facet of your business and be prepared for the bad times.

Exit Plan

You should think about an exit plan which can work for a successful turnout and a failed one. If your objective is to sell it if it becomes successful, this should be your mindset from day 1. That means proper documentation, proper accounting records, quality manuals, operating procedures, etc. And you should also recognize when to pull the plug if you’re incurring losses faster than the bullet train. This will help you make the right decision when faced with either situation.

These should give you an idea of the likely scenario if and when you decide to make a go for making yourself your own boss and be successful with it.

SEO Techniques That Don’t Work Anymore

Posted On Thursday, June 20, 2013 By Business Marketing Press

Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms in an effort to weed out the web of spammy sites and increase the quality of sites ranked high on the search engine results page. The effect of this on search engine optimization is that some optimization techniques or strategies that used to work before are now rendered useless and obsolete, and therefore a waste of time. These can even lead to some penalties imposed by Google. Search engines are becoming smarter and sensitive that some black hat SEO tricks have been totally trashed by the search engine crawlers and spiders.

“Down the Drain” SEO Techniques

The following, lists down some SEO techniques which are just a waste of time.

Link exchange. Search engines no longer recognize the essence of reciprocal links. A link exchange will not benefit your site unless the website you exchange links with is a much-trusted and higher-ranked in Google. Search engines look for quality and authority links.

META Tags. Stuffing the META-keyword tag with the same words a billion times worked its way with search engines a few years back. Not anymore. Google’s thrust is gradually downgrading the significance of keywords as an optimization technique. Webmasters no longer need to spend too much time on finding good keywords for the meta-keyword tag.

Keyword Stuffing. Most search engines no longer value keyword stuffing in the content to get a good keyword density. Search engine crawlers are concerned mostly with semantics indexing – not putting a lot of keywords but instead using words that are relevant to the subject or topic. For example, if your website is about dental clinic, use words like oral hygiene, orthodontist, dentist, oral prophylaxis.

SEO copy-writing. This involves the writing of content in a way that it is optimized for search engine ranking. Content with carefully selected keyword and placing it in specific places like the title and using it frequently across the content’s body used to work well with search engines. These days, other people’s opinion on a particular page or site has much more bearing than what is actually written on the site or page. In other words, most search engines give importance to the quality links and relevant keywords used in the link when deciding on the ranking of said site or page. The words on the page no longer carry so much weight with search engines like they did before. Webmasters that still use the trick of filling a page with keywords and even making it invisible to the human eye will find no success in their target ranking.

These SEO techniques were once popular but with the updated search engine algorithms, they no longer deliver results. Leading search engines are directing their algorithms to detect sites not only with relevant content but are user-friendly instead of being search engine friendly.

The job of the search engines is to provide their users with the most relevant and valuable content every single time someone searches for something. And to date, this is still Google’s and other major search engines’ goal.